(RNS) — The 1979 collapse of the Iranian monarchy coincided with the publication of Christopher Lasch’s blockbuster book of ideas, “The Culture of Narcissism,” a critique of American celebrity, grandiosity and spiritual emptiness. In retrospect, the book explains the reasons Iran’s young radicals rose up against the Shah’s regime and the results of the revolution that put the first ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, in power. It may also explain the reasons for the current war. In the United States, a narcissistic “cult of the self,” as Lasch puts it, tended then (and clearly tends now) to self-aggrandizement and an unhealthy focus on personal image and consumption. The current administration is a case study of the problem, even as it wraps itself in so-called Christian nationalism. In pre-revolutionary Iran, the overwhelming wealth of the monarchy, combined with aggressive modernization, presented Iranians with a worldview tilted toward an unattainable consumerism. They overthrew the Shah and his petrodollar trappings and replaced him with the austere presence of the supreme leader, a position that now appears to have become hereditary. …